Aged Care Amendment (Restoring Human Override for Aged Care Needs Assessments) Bill 2026

Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (09:01): The Aged Care Amendment (Restoring Human Override for Aged Care Needs Assessments) Bill 2026 restores a simple principle: decisions about care should be made by a qualified person, a qualified professional, not a computer algorithm with no human capacity. The current system allows an algorithm to determine outcomes without any capacity for a trained assessor to override it.

This bill ensures the tool supports, not replaces, professional judgement, and it enshrines it in primary legislation. The Integrated Assessment Tool should be a tool that assists assessors, not replaces professional judgement. The bill achieves this in three very practical ways.

First, it restores the discretion of qualified assessors to override or adjust an algorithm's recommendation where their clinical judgement tells them that that outcome is wrong. Second, it improves transparency by requiring decision notices to explain how the algorithm was used and how the assessor's professional judgement influenced the final outcome, giving older Australians greater confidence in the process.

And, third, it creates the right for people assessed since 1 November 2025 to seek a fresh assessment if they believe the algorithm produced an incorrect classification, ensuring people are not locked into decisions that have been wrong. This bill responds to the significant concern raised by assessors, advocacy organisations and older Australians that the current system is failing to accurately assess people's care needs.

It recognises that no algorithm can replace the experienced judgement and clinical expertise of a trained assessor when making complex decisions about an older person's care needs. The bill strengthens accountability by making the assessment process more transparent. Importantly, this is not about changing eligibility or increasing funding levels; it is about ensuring the existing assessment system produces fair, clinically-sound decisions about an older person's care needs.

The department confirmed in estimates in June 2026 that the algorithm was never tested as part of the live trial in 2023; it was developed and tested internally only within the department. There was never any consultation. The tool has never been clinically validated, and the decision to remove human override was a budget decision.

If the government is genuinely committed to protecting older Australians, it should support this bill this morning and enshrine human override into the primary legislation. Our bill provides lasting protection by embedding the right of qualified assessors to exercise their professional judgement in primary legislation, ensuring future governments cannot remove human override without proper parliamentary scrutiny.

We know what happens when those protections are absent. The government removed human override without consultation with assessors, providers, older Australians or their representatives. Decisions of this magnitude—decisions that determine the level of care an older person receives—should never be made behind closed doors or altered by regulation alone; they should be subject to the full parliamentary oversight and accountability of this place.

To the thousands of older Australians who've had their care packages slashed or been deemed ineligible altogether, even as their conditions deteriorate and worsen, we will support you. Families and frontline assessors are watching vulnerable seniors denied the support they need to stay safely in their own homes. This is not the person centred, rights based aged-care system Labor promised the Australian people.

Minister Rae's rapid review is a damning admission that the tool is failing, yet he has ruled out reinstating human override while only tinkering around the edges. Labor has failed older Australians at every single turn. Their reckless algorithms-first approach is driving assessors out of the sector in droves and leaving older Australians worse off than they have previously been.

This is just another example of how the Labor government is leaving older Australians behind at a time when they are most vulnerable. Older Australians have told us that they want this bill passed, and their families have asked for it, too. Unlike the Labor government, the coalition and others in this chamber have listened, and we will act.